Health: 1950(+4% per level)
Health Regeneration: 1.5(+4% per level) Mana: 500
Mana Regeneration: 1(+4% per level) Attack Damage: 121(+4% per level) Attack Speed: 1.1
Attack Range: 1.5
Combat Trait
1
Stored Time
Nozdormu stores time throughout the game. Every 5 seconds Nozdormu gains 1 Stored Time, to a maximum of 5.
Nozdormu's abilities that deal damage do not increase in damage dealt as he levels, but rather decrease in cooldowns and increase in duration.
Ability cooldowns cannot be reduced below 2 seconds.
Primary Abilities
1
Q: Slowing Blast
Cooldown - 8(-0.25 per level) seconds
Mana Cost - 35
Cast Range - Skillshot
Area Range - 6
Area Size - Cone, 0.75 at start to 2.5 at end
Nozdormu launches a blast of slowing energies from his mouth, causing all enemies in the area to move 12% slower, decaying over 2(+0.25 per level) seconds.
2
W: Body Slam
Cooldown - 8 (-0.25 per level) seconds
Mana Cost - 25
Cast Range - 1.5
Target enemy hero is stunned for 1 second, and takes 90 damage.
3
E: Time is Ticking
Cooldown - 20(-0.25 per level) seconds
Mana Cost - 60
Cast Range - 4.5
Consumes all Stored Time. Target enemy hero is stunned for a number of seconds equal to half the consumed Stored Time.
Secondary Abilities
1
Time Glimpse
Cooldown - 50 seconds(-0.25 per level) seconds
Mana Cost - 50
Cast Range - N/A
Immediately gain 1 Stored Time.
Immediately gain 1 additional Stored Time for each Stored Time Nozdormu had when this ability was cast.
Heroic Abilities
1
R1: Bronze Dragonflight
Cooldown: 65(-0.25 per level) seconds
Mana Cost - 75
Cast Range: N/A
Area Range: 6
Area Size: 6
All ally heroes around Nozdormu gain +25% attack speed for 5(+0.25 per level) seconds.
Increase maximum Stored Time by 1.
2
R2: Wasn't Down Before
Cooldown - 55(-0.25 per level) seconds
Mana Cost - 100
Cast Range - Self
Nozdormu consumes all Stored Time and gains Unstoppable for a number of seconds equal to the consumed Stored Time.
Using this ability breaks all crowd control effects on Nozdormu, whether any Stored Time was consumed or not.
Increase maximum Stored Time by 1.
Special Mount
1
All Places in All Times
Cooldown - 30 seconds
Cast Range - 15(+2 per Stored Time)
After 2 seconds, Nozdormu teleports to target location.
Level One Talents
RED TALENTS ARE BEING REMOVED OR CHANGED.
Deep Hourglass: QUEST: After spending a total of 40 seconds at maximum Stored Time, increase maximum Stored Time by 3.
Chronomantic Strikes: Every third auto attack generates one Stored Time.
Time Well Spent: Time is Ticking refunds 1 Stored Time.
Time Glimpse: Gain the secondary ability Time Glimpse.
Level Four Talents
Chronomancer's Blast: Slowing Blast triggers again 1.5 seconds after it was cast.
Drugging Gale: Slowing Blast slows for 75% more.
Infinite Breath: Temporal Blast gains an Area Range of global.
Distortion Bomb: Gain the secondary ability Distortion Bomb.
Level Seven Talents
Jarring Realization: Time is Ticking deals 205 damage to the target.
Blind Sometime: Time is Ticking blinds the target for 0.5 seconds for every consumed Stored Time.
Burnished Flight: After All Places in All Times' channel Nozdormu flies to the target location over 2 seconds instead of teleporting. When he arrives, he gains a shield equal to 30% of his maximum health for 5 seconds.
Paradox: After casting All Places in All Times Nozdormu leaves a Shade of Murozond. The Shade attacks nearby enemies for 12(+0.25 per level) seconds, dealing 81 damage per attack.
Level Thirteen Talents
Dragon's Bulk: Increases Body Slam's damage by 225%.
Twice in Time: Nozdormu gains +2.5% attack speed for every Stored Time.
Level Sixteen Talents
Breath of the Bronze: Nozdormu's auto attack gains +3.5 range and splashes for 50% damage.
Breath of the Timeless: Nozdormu's auto attack gains +5.5 Range and +25% damage.
Painful Glimpse: Only available if Time Glimpse was chosen at Level One. Time Glimpse deals 85(+4% per level) damage to Nozdormu and puts Nozdormu at maximum Stored Time.
Glimpse of Eternity: Only available if Time Glimpse was chosen at Level One. Time Glimpse grants 1 additional Stored Time.
Staggering Possibilities: Only available if Time Glimpse was chosen at Level One. Time Glimpse stuns nearby enemy heroes for 0.25(+0.25 per level) seconds.
Level Twenty Talents
Aspect of Time: Casting a heroic ability refreshes the cooldowns of Nozdormu's basic abilities. Casting a basic ability reduces the cooldown of Nozdormu's heroic ability by 1 second.
Sliding Through Time: All stuns, roots, and slows on Nozdormu last -20% longer.
Learned in Another Time: Nozdormu may select one additional talent from each of Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III (Levels One, Four, and Seven).
Changelog
November 4th, 2020:
Marked talents as red which will be removed.
September 8th, 2020:
Began massive rework.
June 5th, 2020:
Edited the Pros/Cons.
May 5th, 2020:
Fixed some clunky sentence structure in the talents.
I have to give some fairly straightforward criticism of this moveset. I think there are some interesting elements, such as increasing the duration of effects while levelling rather than increasing damage. While I think there's potential there, the mechanic I'd really like to critique is the Nozdormu/Murozond switching element.
It's something I see crop up from time to time, but a rule of thumb is that you shouldn't add a non-heroic switching mechanic unless you have a very good reason to do so. The mechanic needs to either woven into the moveset in a way where switching is inevitable (D.Va/Greymane), or about balancing out a character's matchups in situations where an extreme design would otherwise see them lopsided (Deathwing). While I think Nozdormu's two forms have a very clear role (damage vs. crowd control), and the long cooldown of the trait means that switching isn't a decision to take lightly, I feel like this would ultimately be a scenario where one would be played almost exclusively over the other, no matter how much you play with the numbers.
I have other relatively minor issues I'd like to bring up, but the switching mechanic is the one I wanted to bring up first.
At present, I think your options are to either rethink switching or to remove it, yes. One thing could be to design Nozdormu like a metronome in that you get weaker the longer you stay in one form, but that in turn makes the other stronger, though that'd probably require rethinking almost the entire kit.
Q: Slowing Blast
So the first thing that sticks out to me is the 12% slow element. For starters, it's a very weak slow, and while a soft CC tool is fine, HotS always sticks to armor and speed changes in increments of 5 wherever it can. But that minor nitpick aside, at level 16 this move becomes a 5 second slow, but it's such a minor debuff that, without talents (or proc on slow effects eg. Executioner) the ability is essentially useless at baseline, which is something no ability should ever be.
Increasing the Slow amount could easily be justified. A 30% slow that decays over 2 seconds starts to hit the threshold of notable CC, but once it hits a 5 second duration (on an ability with the same cooldown) things start to become trouble. Ideally you'd want to find a sweetspot where the move has some utility at early levels, while remaining reasonable at higher, and while I think 20-25% is about the best you could go with, I simply don't think the ability is really compatible with the duration improvement mechanics.
I do think it is somewhat salvagable, at least. Perhaps if it were an area of effect that provided a strong slow to those within, that could allow for more counterplay to the otherwise long-lasting effects, though you'd need to make the move only allow one to exist at a time (though maybe you could have a talent that ups the cap). Though you'd also need to find a way to make the move distinct from Chromie's Slowing Sands. Maybe by having it be an AoE that moves (like a skillshot), or by merging it with Temporal Blast.
Speaking of...
Q: Temporal Blast
I'm having a bit of trouble visualising this, how the re-triggers activate, but I'm imagining a semi-transparent copy of Murozond's head blasting the area over and over.
I think this one is easier to balance with the duration/cooldown reduction mechanic than the other Q talent. Essentially what you're doing is making several mini versions of Orphea's Eternal Feast, and in theory that could be very fun to use and not overly oppressive for the most part. It might be a bit much on Dragon Shire or Braxis Holdout, where the objectives are really small, but for the most part it's fine.
But where I think it becomes a problem is in the text "Both ally and enemy heroes trigger the effect". It's a really exploitable attribute that turns the move into an interesting game of forcing the opponent to yield space or press forward into having them bite the bullet with the only real counterplay being to wait it out for 3 seconds, a counterplay that becomes less and less viable as Murozon's cooldowns get lower.
Overall though this is a move that comes closer to justifying the cooldown reduction mechanic, while also creating a move that rewards good plays with lots of extra value.
W: Tail Swipe
There's nothing too inherently wrong with this one. The fact that it's shared between forms is reasonable, but there's a minor problem in the fact that character orientation mechanics don't really exist in Heroes of the Storm. Right now the only ones that really matter (beyond certain channelled abilities) are Samuro's Shukuchi, and the fact that Dehaka can't auto-attack someone behind him when using Drag. The reason for this is fairly simple: When all characters are capable of turning in any direction at instant speed, the actual impact of an orientation-specific move simply becomes to make those moves more irritating to perform. Just aiming the AoE in a fixed direction is a lot more convenient than clicking in the opposite direction and trying to time your inputs as close together as possible.. The only time orientation specific moves have a substantial impact on gameplay in HotS is when the character is Rooted, which is a rare enough Crowd Control effect to not really matter.
E: Back in Time
I said 'relaitvely minor issues' in my original post, but I think this one is a bit more than that. Just from a mechanical perspective this requires the game to track the coordinates of all five (or more) of Nozdormu's opponents. While not completely unreasonable, this kind of thing would probably require the game to save each character's coordinates several times a second for up to 9 seconds (with talents). It's not that much additional memory or overhead, but with enough bodies it could add a dozen new things for the system to do several times a second, all on a game that doesn't have the best optimisation.
On top of that it would be unfun and unfair to play against. At instant speed you could be displaced half the map away, or just lose your positioning instantly without any chance to respond. And I don't think adding a 1 second channel time would really do much to help (though also lowering it to .5 seconds per Stored Time might). It can also hard-counter characters like Dehaka and Falstad who get value from showing up late to objectives.
E: Time is Ticking
At minimum this is 'after 1 second, stun an enemy for .25 seconds', all the way up to after 5 seconds for a 1.25 second stun (or 9 for 2.25 seconds with all talents). The amount of time spent waiting for the effect to go off would rarely be worth the payoff. A .25 second stun is really only useful for disrupting a channel, but with most channel times being done in a second or less, you'd need to go for a hard read to get the payoff. Meanwhile the maximum power version is too telegraphed to be useful unless they're forced to stay out of position.
I think for this one just changing the numbers would probably be sufficient.
Overall I think this moveset suffers a bit from simultaneously trying to avoid duplicating Chromie and from looking too far into being unique. Personally I don't think the Nozdormu/Murozond switching concept adds all too much, and wonder if it wouldn't be better to leave Murozond as a skin or even a Heroic ability, and instead focus on finding moves that truly take advantage of the cooldown reduction aspect of the moveset.
I think the moves that currently exist in this concept could serve as a template to create an effective and cohesive moveset, though I'm hard pressed to say what the right combination would be.
I see now that there were certainly a lot of issues with the overall kit, and after reading your feedback I think I plan to remove the Nozdormu/Murozond system entirely, while keeping the duration/cooldown part in place (it does kind of seem like there are two 'main things' about this concept).
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It's something I see crop up from time to time, but a rule of thumb is that you shouldn't add a non-heroic switching mechanic unless you have a very good reason to do so. The mechanic needs to either woven into the moveset in a way where switching is inevitable (D.Va/Greymane), or about balancing out a character's matchups in situations where an extreme design would otherwise see them lopsided (Deathwing). While I think Nozdormu's two forms have a very clear role (damage vs. crowd control), and the long cooldown of the trait means that switching isn't a decision to take lightly, I feel like this would ultimately be a scenario where one would be played almost exclusively over the other, no matter how much you play with the numbers.
I have other relatively minor issues I'd like to bring up, but the switching mechanic is the one I wanted to bring up first.
And I would be very grateful to hear the other, relatively minour issues as well :)
Q: Slowing Blast
So the first thing that sticks out to me is the 12% slow element. For starters, it's a very weak slow, and while a soft CC tool is fine, HotS always sticks to armor and speed changes in increments of 5 wherever it can. But that minor nitpick aside, at level 16 this move becomes a 5 second slow, but it's such a minor debuff that, without talents (or proc on slow effects eg. Executioner) the ability is essentially useless at baseline, which is something no ability should ever be.
Increasing the Slow amount could easily be justified. A 30% slow that decays over 2 seconds starts to hit the threshold of notable CC, but once it hits a 5 second duration (on an ability with the same cooldown) things start to become trouble. Ideally you'd want to find a sweetspot where the move has some utility at early levels, while remaining reasonable at higher, and while I think 20-25% is about the best you could go with, I simply don't think the ability is really compatible with the duration improvement mechanics.
I do think it is somewhat salvagable, at least. Perhaps if it were an area of effect that provided a strong slow to those within, that could allow for more counterplay to the otherwise long-lasting effects, though you'd need to make the move only allow one to exist at a time (though maybe you could have a talent that ups the cap). Though you'd also need to find a way to make the move distinct from Chromie's Slowing Sands. Maybe by having it be an AoE that moves (like a skillshot), or by merging it with Temporal Blast.
Speaking of...
Q: Temporal Blast
I'm having a bit of trouble visualising this, how the re-triggers activate, but I'm imagining a semi-transparent copy of Murozond's head blasting the area over and over.
I think this one is easier to balance with the duration/cooldown reduction mechanic than the other Q talent. Essentially what you're doing is making several mini versions of Orphea's Eternal Feast, and in theory that could be very fun to use and not overly oppressive for the most part. It might be a bit much on Dragon Shire or Braxis Holdout, where the objectives are really small, but for the most part it's fine.
But where I think it becomes a problem is in the text "Both ally and enemy heroes trigger the effect". It's a really exploitable attribute that turns the move into an interesting game of forcing the opponent to yield space or press forward into having them bite the bullet with the only real counterplay being to wait it out for 3 seconds, a counterplay that becomes less and less viable as Murozon's cooldowns get lower.
Overall though this is a move that comes closer to justifying the cooldown reduction mechanic, while also creating a move that rewards good plays with lots of extra value.
W: Tail Swipe
There's nothing too inherently wrong with this one. The fact that it's shared between forms is reasonable, but there's a minor problem in the fact that character orientation mechanics don't really exist in Heroes of the Storm. Right now the only ones that really matter (beyond certain channelled abilities) are Samuro's Shukuchi, and the fact that Dehaka can't auto-attack someone behind him when using Drag. The reason for this is fairly simple: When all characters are capable of turning in any direction at instant speed, the actual impact of an orientation-specific move simply becomes to make those moves more irritating to perform. Just aiming the AoE in a fixed direction is a lot more convenient than clicking in the opposite direction and trying to time your inputs as close together as possible.. The only time orientation specific moves have a substantial impact on gameplay in HotS is when the character is Rooted, which is a rare enough Crowd Control effect to not really matter.
E: Back in Time
I said 'relaitvely minor issues' in my original post, but I think this one is a bit more than that. Just from a mechanical perspective this requires the game to track the coordinates of all five (or more) of Nozdormu's opponents. While not completely unreasonable, this kind of thing would probably require the game to save each character's coordinates several times a second for up to 9 seconds (with talents). It's not that much additional memory or overhead, but with enough bodies it could add a dozen new things for the system to do several times a second, all on a game that doesn't have the best optimisation.
On top of that it would be unfun and unfair to play against. At instant speed you could be displaced half the map away, or just lose your positioning instantly without any chance to respond. And I don't think adding a 1 second channel time would really do much to help (though also lowering it to .5 seconds per Stored Time might). It can also hard-counter characters like Dehaka and Falstad who get value from showing up late to objectives.
E: Time is Ticking
At minimum this is 'after 1 second, stun an enemy for .25 seconds', all the way up to after 5 seconds for a 1.25 second stun (or 9 for 2.25 seconds with all talents). The amount of time spent waiting for the effect to go off would rarely be worth the payoff. A .25 second stun is really only useful for disrupting a channel, but with most channel times being done in a second or less, you'd need to go for a hard read to get the payoff. Meanwhile the maximum power version is too telegraphed to be useful unless they're forced to stay out of position.
I think for this one just changing the numbers would probably be sufficient.
Overall I think this moveset suffers a bit from simultaneously trying to avoid duplicating Chromie and from looking too far into being unique. Personally I don't think the Nozdormu/Murozond switching concept adds all too much, and wonder if it wouldn't be better to leave Murozond as a skin or even a Heroic ability, and instead focus on finding moves that truly take advantage of the cooldown reduction aspect of the moveset.
I think the moves that currently exist in this concept could serve as a template to create an effective and cohesive moveset, though I'm hard pressed to say what the right combination would be.
I see now that there were certainly a lot of issues with the overall kit, and after reading your feedback I think I plan to remove the Nozdormu/Murozond system entirely, while keeping the duration/cooldown part in place (it does kind of seem like there are two 'main things' about this concept).